Tweet On the third day, I made a sea-change decision: I thought, if I ever get out of this miserable desert, I’m going to write my first postcard ever. “Sunny Greetings from the Gobi!” it will say, happily scrawled over a stark...

Tweet A man with a machine gun has been following me for the last five days. His name is Zia, and he is very, very shy, especially for a man with a machine gun. He first started shadowing me in the town of Chitral, near the end...

Tweet “Hell is not hot, or cold. Nor is it deep below ground, or somewhere in the sky. Instead it is a place on Earth filled with sucking bogs, disfiguring diseases, and millions of tiny flesh-eating creatures. Hell is a jungle...

Tweet DISCLAIMER: No animals were harmed in the making of this story. *Except for the cobra that I vanquished with scissors. Oh, and the rat that I smashed against a wall and ate. ************* “Take it!” Tai exclaimed, thrusti...

Tweet Saigon is an unsung paradise for theme park connoisseurs. It’s like a Southeast Asian Orlando, except all the theme parks are aggressively Buddhist-themed and hilariously bat-shit insane. My main reason for coming was the...

Tweet “That’s too touristy,” shouted Jon, stabbing a spring roll with his chopstick and dunking it in fish sauce. “It can’t be that bad,” I shrugged. The Sapa Valley I’d seen in brochures was a bucolic paradise. It promised ver...

Tweet To ease the burden of the ambitious mystery-project I signed on to in April, an intern was to fly from New York to Bangkok and assist me in my affairs for one and a half months. “I get a slave.” “That’s not what you’re ge...

Tweet It was July, 2008. I had barely choked down my seventh shot of Israeli arak—or perhaps eighth, or ninth, I’m not sure—when I heard Joe’s inebriated screams from across the bar. “STEEEVVEEE,” he was slurring, “ OH NOOOO!” ...

Tweet DISCLAIMER: While the following events, places, and conversations have been depicted as loyally as possible, I’ve taken artistic liberty in distorting the debauched individuals involved, to protect both their identities a...